Those among us who have followed the development blog may recall the time when we put out a call for artists, aptly titled, “Calling All Artists”. We didn’t specify why we were looking for artists, but in the coming weeks you’re going to see why we did and what the artists who responded created in the form of fan art.

Continuing towards Cave Story’s March 22nd (2010) launch we’re going to be showing some of this fantastic artwork and while asking these very talented artists questions about themselves and how they created these works.

You may know him as FargalEX and not by his real name, Sam Miller. If you do know his work, then you'll be familiar with his style. Miller currently works as an artist at a teeny, tiny game company called Rare. You may have heard of it. Sam was lucky enough to land this job immediately after finishing his university studies in animation. Now he drives to work in a Ferrari and drinks Cristal during his lunch breaks.

How did you get involved in artwork?
I've always been into drawing and games. I usually find games to be a great source of inspiration - the earliest being Sonic the Hedgehog (who I drew ridiculous amounts of when I was little). Cave Story is no exception and had a huge artistic influence on me.

What are your tools of the trade?
Everything usually starts off on pencil and paper and on the PC I mainly use Photoshop or Illustrator. If I'm animating I use Flash and After Effects. I usually don't venture much into traditional media past a nice soft pencil and some good paper.

What kind of advice can you offer someone interested in getting involved with artwork and digital media?
Just practice loads, compare your own work to what's out there and set yourself up for improvement. Don't try to limit yourself to working in one particular style. I certainly have a long way to go!

What is your experience with Cave Story?
I think I learned of Cave Story just after it was translated into English, when it started popping up on gaming blogs and forums. I can't remember the exact site where I heard of it first but after I downloaded and started it up I fell in love right away - everything about it was so incredibly charming and satisfying to play.

Your painting is not only a scene from the game, but, coincidentally, also a screen shot we posted on the blog previously.
What made you select this specific scene and can you tell us about it?
I was actually thinking back to coverart used on old game boxes where an artist would have to imagine how a pixelly 2D game would look in 3 dimensions. The screenshot on the blog captured a point in the game I was very fond of and I felt compelled to do something with it. Find those puppies!

There were a few other scenes in the game such as some of the boss battles, particularly encounters with Balrog (who I really wanted to draw) that I would have enjoyed drawing but I wanted to recreate a scene that hadn't been done before. I think another drawing based on the same scene popped up shortly after I did it though, haha!

How long did it take you to put together?
About a week on and off, at the time I was very busy trying to make my final year animation at University which I still haven't finished. I'm going to blame working on this picture for not meeting my deadline.

Can you tell us a little bit about the process of creating it?
I started off the image in black and white and tried to get all the composition how I wanted it/have all the elements in the image before I made the jump to color. The images above show some of the iterations the painting went through.

Where can people find your work?
Fargalex or my Deviant Art Page

What's your latest painting?
At the time of writing it's this image. Not very exciting and reeeeeaallyyy rough, it's something I quickly drew for my flatmate because he wanted a bit of reference to try modelling one of my characters in ZBrush. I try to keep my website updated so check back every now and then!